YUKOS and Transneft to prove ecological safety of their projects

YUKOS and Transneft are to submit documents on carrying out an ecological study for constructing an oil pipeline from Russia to China, to the Russian Natural Resources Ministry in the middle of December, Amirkhan Amirkhanov, the head of the Environmental Expertise Department of the Natural Resources Ministry, told journalists today. According to him, the companies have not submitted enough documents to carry out an ecological study. In particular, there are no documents on agreeing to their projects with authorities of those regions where the pipeline is expected to be constructed. YUKOS is planning to lay the pipeline through the national park in Buryatia. Transneft's project affects interests of seven regions and republics where a lot of protected wild areas are situated. Transneft's project is more complicated as the pipeline is planned to be longer than YUKOS's, the official specified.

As it was reported earlier, the construction of an oil pipeline from Russia to China was initiated in 2000 by YUKOS. The Russian government approved this project and Transneft decided to join it as the operator of the pipeline. Moreover, both companies proposed their variants for constructing the pipeline. The project is aimed at exporting 50m tons of Russian oil to countries of the Asian Pacific region.

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